Thief of iconic Winston Churchill portrait 'Roaring Lion' sentenced to jail
The portrait, known as Roaring Lion, vanished from the walls of Ottawa's Fairmont Château Laurier in 2022, sparking a multi-year police investigation.
According to Canada's public broadcaster CBC, the man, Jeffrey Wood, pleaded guilty in March to forgery, theft, and trafficking property obtained by crime.
He was sentenced to jail for almost two years on Monday, local time, at an Ottawa courthouse.
CBC reported that Justice Robert Wadden told Wood that he was guilty of stealing a "cultural and historical" portrait that was a "point of national pride".
The judge said Wood planned to use the money he received from selling the portrait to help his brother, according to the Toronto Star.
"But his brother died that spring before Mr Wood received the proceeds from the sale," Mr Wadden said in his decision.
The famed portrait was snapped by Armenian-born Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1941, just after Churchill gave a rousing wartime address to the Canadian parliament.
The image is arguably the most recognised of Churchill and widely circulated, even appearing on the British five pound note.
Mr Karsh gifted the photograph to the Fairmont Château Laurier hotel in 1998, where it hung in a reading room next to the main lobby.
But in August 2022, staff member Bruno Lair noticed an issue with the frame — a wire where specialised locking bolts should have been.
Ottowa police said a fake print, complete with a forged artist's signature, sat where the original once hung for several months before it was discovered.
"At the beginning, we had nothing but a big hole in the wall where this portrait was supposed to be, and no leads," lead investigator Detective Akiva Geller said.
Police said a piece of tape attached to the fake, torn with teeth, had retained traces of saliva, but no matches were found in the national DNA database initially.
Mr Geller began scouring auction houses and online listings around the world.
He discovered a suspicious Roaring Lion print, claiming to be from the Karsh estate, which was marked for sale at Sotheby's in London.
Police said it had no history, the wrong frame, slight damage and was sold in May 2022, within the period of the theft.
Meanwhile, the hotel called for people to submit photos from their visits to the venue.
This allowed police to determine the real Roaring Lion had been stolen and replaced sometime between December 25, 2021, and January 6, 2022.
To pinpoint the seller, Mr Geller initiated a "mutual legal assistance treaty" request.
Almost a year later, a trove of documents confirmed the suspect's identity as Jeffrey Wood, a 43-year-old man from Powassan, Ontario.
Police said Wood had fabricated a fake persona, attempting to sell the stolen portrait under a pseudonym.
Mr Geller obtained a search warrant for Wood's storage unit, where he uncovered another Roaring Lion print and a toothbrush with a DNA match to the torn tape.
Wood was arrested on April 25 last year.
The buyer of the portrait, an Italian lawyer who was unaware it was stolen, worked with police to return it to Canada, where it was reinstalled at the hotel on November 15.
Mr Karsh previously said making the portrait "changed his life", adding he captured Churchill's expression immediately after plucking a cigar out of the British leader's mouth.
"By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me," Mr Karsh said.
"It was at that instant that I took the photograph."
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